John Safran

Last year, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at King's College London released a report. It named Musa Cerantonio as a "cheerleader for ISIS" and one of the two most influential spiritual authorities for foreign fighters in Syria. He has just sent me a tweet punctuated with an Asian happy face emoji.

"It may come as a surprise but I am a big fan of your shows and just recently re-watched Race Relations ^-^."

Musa is a 29-year-old Australian Muslim convert. Melbourne's Herald Sun tabloid calls him "a feared Islamic State jihadist preacher". He says he's just a former internet security software worker who now teaches Islam. In July last year, after the Australian government cancelled his passport, police raided his then home in the Philippines and deported him back to Australia.

My fellow Triple J presenter Nazeem Hussain (also creator of the SBS comedy show Legally Brown) remembers Musa from a camp run by IISNA, the Islamic Information and Services Network of Australasia.

Home for dinner: Musa with his mother, Paula (who still calls him Robert), and one of his brothers, Steven. Photo: Simon Schluter

"My memory of Musa - we hung out for a bit: he was wearing a particularly Saudi scarf. But this is a white Australian guy," Nazeem says, bemused. "And most Saudis wouldn't wear the scarf." Nazeem says he had an affected accent, popular with converts, that's hard to explain. "It's like the way some people deliver sermons on Friday. It's. Like. That. Particular. Tone. And I'm like, 'Just talk to me like it's a normal conversation.' "

West Footscray, the traditionally working-class suburb in Melbourne's west, is quiet this morning. Grey clouds hang over the street. An Asian man is pushing a pram stacked with catalogues where the baby usually is. He slides one in the mailbox outside Musa's mum's house. Musa has been living here since the deportation.

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Musa has barely a moustache but a substantial beard. I can't see either at the moment, though. His head is stuck in the fridge. "I actually ... I got a drink yesterday, while I was at the supermarket, and I didn't realise just how relevant it would be to give you." He swings around from the fridge. "It's some raspberry cordial!"

Raspberry Cordial was the name of my high school hip-hop group, covered in my TV series Race Relations.

"So, is everyone in your family Muslim, or did you just convert?" I ask.

"Certainly not - just me [and] a cousin of mine. He actually comes and lives with us 'cause both of his parents passed away. I managed to get to him and he became a Muslim. But, you know, I've got three brothers. They're not Muslim and my parents aren't Muslim. Not yet, anyway."

Musa has two daughters from a previous marriage to a Lebanese Australian. He recently married a woman in the Philippines. She was left behind when he was deported. "I can't travel and she can't travel and so I'm sort of, like ... yeah, I'm in a bit of a mess."

Musa says the whole mess started last April when the International Centre for The Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence released its report, Measuring Importance and Influence in Syrian Foreign Fighter Networks. "If you know them [the study's authors], there's just three guys in a basement in London," Musa says, sipping tea at his mum's kitchen table, a cabinet of owl figurines behind him.

The report said that, among foreign fighters in Syria, Musa was the second-most followed preacher on social media. Musa sees this as no surprise: "I was working for three years on a TV show." Musa studied media in Australia and wanted to work behind the cameras. In 2011, an Egyptian TV channel invited him over to be a presenter. They'd been impressed by footage of him preaching at a conference in India a few years earlier.

Surely there would be no shortage of talented Egyptians. Why him?

"They have this fascination with white converts, and I've got blue eyes as well. They love blue eyes, you know? So they do love to prop you up. And I hate that - I absolutely hate the racism that's in the Middle East. Like, you find an African convert, 'You should have him on the show', and they're just, like, 'No. He's black.' "

One of Musa's shows on the TV channel covered Islamic history. "One thing I loved to talk about is when the Muslims fought Dracula." He tells a long tale climaxing with the Ottoman leader Muhammad al-Fateh ending up with his head on a stick. This is what Bram Stoker based his book Dracula on, Musa says.

What did he post on social media that was so contentious? "I make my own maps. There were people in Syria, they'd message me and they'd say, 'Can you update this on the map?' I thought, 'Wow, these guys are actually on the ground and they're finding it useful.' "

"These guys" are Islamic State fighters.

How were his maps different to, say, Google Maps?

"This was sort of showing the situation about which groups control which areas."

The deportation wasn't Musa's first run-in with the Australian government. Five years ago, he was preparing to fly to the Middle East. He wanted to lobby rich businessmen to fund a Melbourne community centre, as part of their Islamic obligation to give to charity. There was a knock at the door. "I wouldn't get many knocks at the door," Musa says. "I'm sort of, like, 'Who is it?' - just thinking it's, you know, Mormons or something."

It was two officers from ASIO. The officers, young people in casual clothes, told him it was just a friendly visit. Musa says every Muslim he knows has been visited by the security agency. "You're a good guy. We trust you," they told him. They said the government supported his efforts to travel and to try to secure funds for the community centre. It was to be run by IISNA, the same organisation that ran the camp where Musa and Nazeem hung out.

After he'd returned from the Middle East - it was a successful trip - the ASIO officers would pop over every so often. A year and a half ago, they went for the up-sell. "They sort of started to say to me, 'We'd like for you to go visit this place. We've heard that there are people there who might be a bit dodgy.' I said, 'No. I'm not being a spy for you.' 'Oh, no, no, no, no, we're not asking you to be a spy. You know, if you need money to cover your travels, no problem, we can get it.' 'No. I'm not doing it.' And they really did start to push.

"I stopped answering their phone calls and they just sort of popped up at my door one day, and all the smiles were gone and they said, 'Look, we've had a good relationship and you're ruining it. You're a public speaker. A lot of the things you say can be taken the wrong way.' "

Musa says he thought to himself, "I don't like the way things are going. I feel very uncomfortable that I'm being threatened by my own government because I won't help them." So he zipped off to the Philippines. His older brother lived in Manila; Musa, however, went to the island of Mindanao, where there is a strong Muslim presence. A Muslim separatist group, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), has been fighting the government for decades. While Musa was on the island, the government bombed the area, including Musa's apartment. He wasn't home at the time. "Everyone said to me, 'Look, Musa, you better go, simply because the Filipino government, once they know there's a foreigner here, they're going to think you're involved in the MNLF, even though you're not.' "

He moved to a different part of the island, met his new wife, and settled down with her. "She's really nice," Musa says, like he's holding something back. "And she's also a, uh, a Eurasian, as you would describe her!" [Eurasian women were a Race Relations trope.]

The police were after him. One day, he found out he only avoided a knock on the door from them because there was another white guy living in his street and some confusion over who was who. To throw the police off, he asked a friend in Syria to log into his Facebook account and type a post saying he was over there. "Now from an Islamic point of view, I'm not actually lying, because he's the one saying, 'I'm in Syria', on my account."

That Musa was supposedly in Syria alarmed the Australian government. This came back to bite him. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop would later call him a fraud; that he was trying to pitch himself as a fearless fighter for Islamic State when he was just holed up on holidays in the Philippines. She said other foreigners, thinking the television star had taken up arms, might have been emboldened to take up arms themselves.

Musa says he's often taken out of context. He once wrote a piece on the origin of the American national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, claiming it was an anti-Islamic song based on fighting in Libya between Americans and Muslims in the early 1800s. "The one who fights on the battlefield," I read out from his piece, "is the greatest of people to defend the Muslim state."

The Dracula story, the "real" history of The Star-Spangled Banner ... Musa is a total nerd for the more obscure elements of Islam.

"So, are you being a bit 'half-pregnant'?" I ask. "Like, why don't you go to Syria to fight?"

Musa stiffens up. "Okay, now this ... what you're getting to now, is a dangerous area. Why? Because you're asking me something that's illegal. I can't answer this. It would be stupid to answer this. And all I can say as a Muslim: it is illegal for Muslims to go there and fight. I can't comment about this." Musa also responds carefully to any questions about exactly what he was doing in the Philippines. "Again, I can't answer this." What was he doing in Mindanao? "I was eating pizza."

Besides the kitchen cabinet, owl figurines are also on the mantelpiece and window sills. Musa says if it was his house, they wouldn't be allowed. They're "graven images". But it's his mum's home, so he abides by her rules. His 25-year-old twin brothers, Nicholas and Steven, live here, too. Nicholas loves metal. He plays drums and wears a black T-shirt featuring a pig. He starts giggling as Musa explains the confusion he causes his Muslim online followers when he links to Monty Python.

"You don't become king just because some watery tart threw a bloody scimitar at you!" Musa squawks, quoting a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "Strange women giving us swords from ponds is no basis for a system of government," Nicholas squawks back.

Nicholas needs a lift somewhere, so Musa drives him through the streets of Footscray. Musa points out the window towards a park. "There were two trees at the end that we'd use as football goals. And just at the end of the street here, you've got the mosque. So even as a non-Muslim, I always used to see this place and just wonder, you know, 'What the hell goes on here?' "

Musa wasn't always musa. Italian on his dad's side, Anglo-Aussie on his mum's, Musa was christened Robert. Musa became fascinated with religion at his Catholic primary school. His family wasn't observant, so he was out on his own on this spiritual journey. In 2000, he visited the Vatican with his school.

"I mean, looking at the Sistine Chapel, seeing this old man with a beard, and they're telling me that's the God they worship? I'm like, 'The Ten Commandments says you shouldn't make images of God.' I realised when we'd pray back in primary school, we'd say, 'Holy Mary, mother of God', and I was sort of like, 'Hold on a moment. Mother of God? God doesn't have a mother.' And I was like, 'Damn ... this is pretty weird.' I realised that the Catholic Church were absolute nut-jobs." At the age of 17, he converted to Islam.

Musa seems to know everyone in Footscray. He moseys down the street with his hand in his pocket, shooting "Salaam alaikums" and small talk to the perfume salesman in the mall and the old men in a Sudanese restaurant. He's like the Fonz. We chew on Sudanese meat dishes in the restaurant. He's ranting about a woman, a left-wing activist from his uni days.

Musa had enrolled at Victoria University in an arts course, majoring in media and history, and on Orientation Day he found she had set up a stall next to his Islamic Society table. "She came over and dropped this pile of flyers for an event they were having, something pro-Palestine," he recalls. "So I said to her, 'Please take them off. I don't want them here.' "

This is the first time I've seen fire in his eyes. This is a different Musa to the one at the house. "She was giving me this confused look, like, 'Why not? I mean, it's for Palestine.' I said, 'Look, you're not a Muslim, you don't agree with Islam. As for us, that's what we want for Palestine. We want Sharia, we want Islamic law. You don't want that, so let's admit we don't want the same thing.' She started to get a little bit offended. She's like, 'Oh, but, you know, we have to work together,' and I'm like, 'No, we don't have to work together.' "

Musa wipes yoghurt off his fingers, still fiery, as he moves from Palestine to Syria. "We believe that Jesus will return as the Messiah. We do agree with the Christians that it will be Jesus Christ, except when he comes back, he's actually going to be fighting against them and show them that their religion has been corrupted. We believe that when he does return, he would return to Syria."

I think how at odds Musa is with everyone, from Tony Abbott to the regular hippies in the Q&A audiences who insist this sort of thing isn't about religion.

He prefers Melbourne to Sydney. "You don't have any Lebanese over here. Personally, I think that's not entirely a bad thing," he chuckles darkly. "They're always up to something." When he says this, with his white skin and Aussie accent, he sounds like a shockjock talkback caller.

His position is not as incongruous as it first seems. Musa, like other Islamic State supporters, believes solely in Islam the religion. Anything cultural, like things associated with being Arab, is seen as a distraction or even blasphemous. When he sees the Palestinian flag, he tells me, he wants to spit on it. The Koran demands one Islamic super-state, not nation states, he says.

"So, I don't understand what happens under an Islamic state," I say. "Does that mean, like, all the rules of the Koran? Like, who decides what's literal?"

"Well, generally, Muslims don't try to hide the reality. So yes, we know that there are punishments that do involve capital punishment." I didn't bring up capital punishment. "This is how it simply will be and any Muslim who disagrees with that or rejects it isn't even a Muslim. The vast majority of Muslims are clear on 95 per cent of matters. You have to pray five times a day - nobody is saying it's six or four - we all agree. The punishment for adultery for a married person is that they are killed. It's clear; nobody debates this."

I find this difficult to believe. "Surely people, like Muslims in Australia, would ... if I went to Nazeem at Triple J and said, 'Do you think adulterers should be stoned?' he'd go, 'No', wouldn't he?"

"They don't have to be stoned," Musa says. "You could also cut their head off."

I laugh reflexively, as if one of my sarcastic friends has said something transgressive for effect. But he's not being sarcastic. I don't quite know what to say.

"So when did you...," I begin, "when did you first, um, discover Monty Python?"

"Probably about year 7. I just watched Life of Brian and then got on to Flying Circus."

Musa continues with film talk as we drive to pick up his mum from work. "This is one thing I do regret, that there aren't many good Muslim filmmakers. And the films that they do make suck. Again, you've got to respect the Jews in this regard. You know, they might put in all of their propaganda, if you believe all that, but at least their films are actually decent."

We pull into a medical clinic, where his mum is a cleaner. "Hello, welcome to my work," she laughs as she and a friend hop in the back seat, her accent classic Aussie. "I'm Paula."

"Salaam," I say. She looks blank. "I said, Salaam. Like -"

"Oh," she says. "And this is my friend, Betty."

"You had garlic, didn't you?" Betty says to Musa, a little sharply. "We can smell it in the car."

Back at home, Musa's twin brothers lounge on the couch. Steven has his nose in a thick fantasy book. Nicholas has his in a fat Stephen King paperback. Everyone's a nerd for something under this roof.

I want to hear what the family has to say away from Musa. We go into Paula's bedroom. She says it wasn't that bad for her when Musa - whom she and the family still call Robert - turned up on the news last July. Her surname hasn't been Cerantonio since she and her husband divorced 11 years ago, so most people didn't connect the dots. Her friend Betty knew, though. "After Robert got home to Australia, she said, 'From now on, if he's gonna pick me up from work, I don't want to be in the car with him.' And I just looked at her. Then the next day ... yeah, I think I did have a bit of a cry, and I thought, 'That was pretty harsh, we're best friends.' "

"When you called me," Nicholas adds, "you said you were upset because you had a feeling everyone at work was talking about it behind your back. Betty's calmed down now. She'll go in the car with him now."

"Robert was very - can we say vile? - when he was a teenager," says Nicholas, adding that his brother would bully him. "But he was a very different person. As weird as it sounds, I think him becoming a Muslim was a very good thing. It mellowed him out."

"Why, was he angry or wild or whatever?" I ask.

"Some people are just pricks," Nicholas says.

My routine explanation for why young men fall into dangerous situations doesn't apply to Musa. He has a loving family. His parents didn't separate until after he converted. He still sees his dad. He wasn't an outcast at school. Bright, popular, good at sports, handsome. He still catches up with his old Footscray friends.

"I think Robert wanted to be a part of something," Nicholas says. "So he was looking at different religions, seeing 'Where do I fit in?' He's studied them, tried to figure [them] out. For whatever reason, Islam struck a chord with him. And he was, like, 'Oh, you know, this one seems apparently foolproof. There's no contradictions every, like, every bloody couple of pages.' So that's a good thing for someone who's a bit more logical."

The explanation for Musa is different to the one most people want. Today he was angrier at left-wingers than neo-cons. He prefers George W. Bush to Barack Obama, and Zionists to hippies. Right-wingers, he says, cut to the chase. The Islamic scriptures say there will be a new epoch, and one of the signs, one of the things that has to happen, is a battle in the region where Islamic State is now fighting. The explanation for Musa is a difficult pill to swallow. He believes.

"Can you tell me something?" I ask the family at dinner. "Do you reckon Musa's voice - sometimes it goes up, like this?" I squeak and lisp. "Like my voice?"

"He seems to have several voices, depending on who he's talking to," Nicholas says, turning to Musa. "Some-times when you speak to Italian people, you're like, 'nah-nah-nah-nah', kind of thing. When he's talking to an Arabic person, there's sort of a tinge to his accent."

While I'm trying to figure out if this chameleon voice means anything, the topic has triggered giggles around the table. "Sometimes my mum loves ...," Musa begins, "she'll just grab the phone and say, 'Come on, make a prank call!' "

"Oh God, he's good!" Paula says, passing a bowl of potatoes. "Remember that time ... I'm laughing already. He rang up about - was it army tanks or something?"

Musa had rung up Melbourne's CityLink private motorway to ask how much the toll was to drive an army tank on the road. "Do you want [another] sample?" he asks, dialling the City Link number.

"What is your registration?" a CityLink woman asks.

"Okay, please," says Musa, sounding a bit like Borat. "Letter B, like for a broccoli. Yeah, A, like asparagus." He makes a throaty "ech" sound that's not quite any letter in the alphabet. "Ech for echmen."

"Is it H for hotel, the last letter?" asks the operator.

"No. Ech, like in echmen."

"Sorry, is it S for Sierra? Or H for hotel?"

"No. Not uh ... Not H, not uh, which one? S? No!"

This drags on for several excruciating minutes. The family and I squish our faces to muffle our laughter.

"Is it in the English alphabet?" City Link woman asks.

"No, of course not. I am from the Ukraine!"

"He's so clever!" Paula says as he hangs up the phone.

Paula shows me something under her bed: a painting of The Last Supper. "That was on the wall and he goes, 'That has to come down.' I said, 'OK, I understand, Rob.' "

"Are you aware he has issues with the owls?" I ask, about her collection of graven images.

"The owls? He's just stuck with them," she says.

Paula pushed back, and radical Musa made a compromise and learnt to live with the owls.

Postscript: The next time I saw Nazeem Hussein, I asked him if he would stone adulterers. He said no.